Johnston sub takes redundancy after 43 years a journalist

A Yorkshire journalist has taken redundancy 43 years to the month after starting work in newspapers.

Quentin Gray, 62, is one of the latest sub-editor leavers from the Johnston Press-owned Yorkshire Post in Leeds after the introduction of the Atex editorial system.

He has worked for the morning title since 1985 variously as business and farming sub-editor and latterly wholly on news production.

Born into a newspaper family, his late father was Sunday wholesale newsagent for the York area, he trained as a journalist on the now defunct weekly Selby Gazette and Herald and also on the Yorkshire Evening Press (now morning title The Press) in his home city of York.

An NUJ member since his first month at work as a journalist, he was NUJ branch secretary in York for many years, area council delegate and ADM delegate. He is now a life member of Leeds NUJ branch.

Gray left York in 1975 to be editor/manager of two weekly paid-for titles, the Holme Valley Express and Huddersfield District Chronicle, in in the West Riding of Yorkshire.

It is the second time he has been made redundant. After ten years, Gray left the Holmfirth-based Huddersfield District Newspapers in 1985 when the Barnsley Chronicle-owned Summer Wine titles were taken over by the then family-owned Huddersfield Daily Examiner company.

Gray had launched two other titles as editor of the weeklies, the paid-for Colne Valley Chronicle plus the free Huddersfield Chronicle to serve the towns of Huddersfield and Mirfield.

He has returned to living in York and said he hopes that colleagues from his training days, at Sheffield Polytechnic in 1968 and then Richmond College, plus on former newspapers will remember him and make contact for possible reunions next year (his email address is quentingray505@yahoo.co.uk.

Topics in this article : Johnston Press